Hi,
Our customer sent us an Indesign file with a layer in Italian and a copy of the same layer to be translated into Chinese.
After setting the first italian layer as non visible in Indesign, I have exported to idml and prepared an Italian - Chinese project in Trados.
After translation the Chinese layer is OK, but the font SIMSUN has been applied also to the text in the Italian layer.
Can this be avoided? Font replacement should be applied only to the visible layer.
Stefano
I tried that and can replicate it. (InDesign 2020 and up-to-date Studio) Although the text of the hidden layer is not imported, the font is changed. Locking the layer that is not to be translated does not help either.
Exporting the source (Italian) Stories to icml does not help either. If I export only the to-be-translated layer to icml and use this, there is no font replacement at all.
Some InDesign parameters can be set on the file level or on the object level. I don't know enough about the technicalities of this file format, but it looks like this is a setting on the file level.
Sorry I can't be of more help here. I am also interested in this.
I would love to learn how an InDesign file needs to be set up to allow for font replacement in one layer only...
Daniel
I tried that and can replicate it. (InDesign 2020 and up-to-date Studio) Although the text of the hidden layer is not imported, the font is changed. Locking the layer that is not to be translated does not help either.
Exporting the source (Italian) Stories to icml does not help either. If I export only the to-be-translated layer to icml and use this, there is no font replacement at all.
Some InDesign parameters can be set on the file level or on the object level. I don't know enough about the technicalities of this file format, but it looks like this is a setting on the file level.
Sorry I can't be of more help here. I am also interested in this.
I would love to learn how an InDesign file needs to be set up to allow for font replacement in one layer only...
Daniel
The only solution i found is disabling font replacement in Trados (in the settings of the Indesign filetype). After exportation from Trados, the Italian layer is unchanged, while the Chinese layer is unreadable, I have used change and replace in Indesign to replace the fonts in the Chinese layer with SIMSUN, then everything seems OK.
Okay, that is obviously a possibility if your document has relatively simple layout.
Somebody else tries to overcome some form of difficulty with a script, which might work well if the script is well programmed and might cause havoc if it is not:
https://redokun.com/blog/indesign-copy-entire-layer-one-file-another
(My impression is that the tool he is recommending can't export selected layers since what he is trying to do with his script would be an out of the box feature in Trados Studio.)
I tried to define paragraph styles for the different languages, but Studio changes them all.
Daniel
Okay, here is what I believe is a good solution:
(This works very nicely and fast at least if you have only one target font.)
Daniel
Yes, Daniel, this is a smart solution, but in a complex document it seems to require the same effort as my previous solution (if e.g. 5 fonts are used, it is necessary to perform 5 replacements). The effort is just moved back to a previous stage of the process. The best solution would be a change in the behaviour of the Trados filetype. If only the visible layer is proposed for translation by Trados, then only that layer should be the subject of font substitution.
Stefano
I only need one operation to change all fonts, regardless of the number of fonts in the source document, but I would like to hear what Paul has to say to all this.
Maybe it's a flaw in how Trados Studio handles this, but maybe it's a file-wide setting in the idml that the individual Stories and Paragraph styles refer to. If that was so, it's hard to imagine how Studio could move this setting into the paragraph style definitions to subsequently change only the ones in one layer.
Daniel
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